Laeral winced. “I have some ethical qualms … convince me, El.”
“I bind nothing and no one lightly. These bound creatures are all menaces-and if I fall in battle, they’ll all be loosed anyway, wherever they are on Toril, without heralding nor any watch over where they go and what they do. Which will undoubtedly be to slaughter and despoil and devour. Why not have that havoc be visited on warriors who’ve taken coin to do butchery on others, in a forest-locked city far from what any of them hold dear, whose inhabitants have threatened them not at all? Let them earn their blood-coins for once. And if all this should thin the ranks of mercenaries, so be it. Better they fall, and all lands be somewhat the safer for the lack of so cheap and plentiful means of making war, than Myth Drannor fall and Shar or Larloch or something worse prevail, the Weave crash, and a new Spellplague or worse race like wildfire across the world, and countless beings be plunged into fear and misery and lives of desperate savagery, fighting every day just to stay alive in the face of-”
“Enough,” Laeral said firmly. “You’ve slain my qualms, not to mention any more qualms I may entertain for the next season or so. Let’s be loosing your beasts-only with precision.”
“Of course,” Elminster agreed. “That is what I need the three of ye to help with. I need ye to steady and guide me, so we translocate each beast to the best spot at the right time.”
“Though every moment we spend means more of my people fall,” the Srinshee said firmly, “we are going to begin by taking time enough to swiftly survey the strength of the foe, and just where they’re scattered. Fortunately, this was a survey I was already undertaking when you arrived. Sit down, all of you.”
“I-”
“Sit down. Or lie down; whatever brings most ease. Linking hands, all of us, in a ring. Attune to me.”
Both Alustriel and Laeral opened their mouths as if to protest, then nodded, sat, and reached out for Elminster- who was grinning at the Srinshee’s sudden fire-and for the Srinshee herself.
It took a moment for their minds to mesh, four so spirited and long-lived individuals, but when the inevitable tugging and surging subsided into a comfortable union, their linked minds flashed out to several pairs of small, darting forest birds, and rode their tiny minds and all-seeing eyes through the trees, sweeping over the Shadovar army ringing Myth Drannor. Everywhere within the city, there were skirmishes and fires and rushing armed bands … but not far off, there were thousands of mercenaries encamped, or waiting orders to advance into the city.
Elminster and the two sisters could feel the Srinshee’s despair growing as she saw just how many hireswords there were-and how few elves were left to stand against them.
“Do it,” she snapped at last. “A good big dragon there, and a dracolich there, and beholders here and here. So anyone fleeing will rush into the fearful running from another peril, not off by themselves to straggle through the forest for days and regroup to do mischief. Hem them in with terror. Then we watch, and unbind more beasts only as some of those fall. Yes?”
“Yes,” three mind-voices agreed, and plunged into Elminster’s memories, following him down to the black elder wyrm Harlotharaur, bound in a deep mountain cavern on the northern edge of Amn after it had gloated to El that nothing and no one could stop it poisoning the wells of human cities and the streams that watered mountain villages, to destroy humans in their tens of thousands, and so rid the land of a pest that endangered all other creatures.
The bindings on the dragon were thus and so … Alustriel and Laeral twisted them, and when the roused Harlotharaur stretched its wings and sat up in fell glee to smite the bindings and win its freedom, the Srinshee smilingly plunged into the dragon’s mind, pinned its every muscle, and held it immobile as she translocated it to precisely the spot she’d chosen-and then flung it into a daze.
When the wyrm recovered, not all that many handfuls of moments later, all trace of the four minds that had so violated it were gone, but it was ringed by angry and fearful humans who were even now assailing it with everything they could swing, hurl, or thrust.
Almost gleefully it gave battle, rearing up and lashing out in one titanic surge. Broken bodies were flung high into the air, or sent spattering off trees all around-and Harlotharaur roared in exulting challenge, and set about harvesting more bodies to hurl. It gathered itself for a bound into the air, and flung out its wings for one great beat-only to feel nothing. The muscles that should coil and let it bound into the air twitched and spasmed instead of obeying, and the wings drooped; they could spread but not beat down with any force at all, nor hold an edge …
In baffled rage Harlotharaur tried again and again, throwing back its head and howling its fury. And then it lowered its head and reached out with its claws and jaws, and dug into the armed humans around it, savaging them and scattering them like dried leaves, and then savaging them some more.
By then, the Srinshee was already rooting through Elminster’s deep memories, dismissing the seething pain it caused him with a brisk, “The sooner we’re in and out and done, the sooner you can start mending your mind-something you should have given more thought to long ago.”
Finding the dracolich he wanted her to find, the Srinshee pounced.
Its cold eyes stared around vainly in the lightless, frigid water and swirling mud. El, Srinshee, Laeral, and Alustriel could all feel its puzzlement, and now, as they drifted in more closely to its flashing thoughts, could hear what it was thinking.
Who were these awakeners? They were-they were in its own mind, nowhere to be seen …
Anger and fear blossomed and rose in the bone dragon’s thoughts. It was Tlossarylathaunglar by name, one of the oldest and most fell creations of the Cult of the Dragon, long frozen by El’s will and Art in the silted depths of a frigid Underdark lake after it refused to stop using its spells and undead brawn to cause collapse after collapse in the Realms Below, crushing entire deep gnome cities and flooding a huge network of caverns that were home to drow, duergar, and dwarves alike by shattering lake basins in the bedrock above them. All for the delight of slaying and the goal of opening vast subterranean caverns it could fly through, and rule over …
Now, Tlossaryl was aroused.
It was appalled to find itself in the grip of a mind far mightier than its own, enraged to feel the attentive awareness of that other, hated mind that had bound it, and frightened to discover that two other minds of power were also in contact with it. Its struggles were feeble-or rather, crushed before they could amount to anything-until it was suddenly elsewhere, in the blinding light and warmth, in air instead of water, and surrounded by so many angry and excited minds that the dracolich was overwhelmed anew, and frankly cowered.
Then the four minds that had gripped it so powerfully were gone, and it was free. Attacked by thousands of armed humans rushing at it from all sides, but unhampered at last-at last! — and so, free to give battle. It beat its bony wings, shattering trees and swiftly learning how entangled by the forest it was-and also discovering that it had lost the power to fly; that part of its undeath and magic had been stripped from it.
That plunged it into a darker, deeper rage than it had ever felt in all its life and unlife, and it lost no time in venting that fury. The minds all around it flared up into fresh rages of their own-and fear. Fear that Tlossaryl reveled in, as it slew, maimed, and slew some more.